I may be wrong, but something interesting seems to be happening in Croatia at this iffy juncture. Now that the accession to the European Union seems to be receding at a clip, the media are getting sour in an unprecedented way. All of a sudden, everything is up for grabs. Or so it seems to me. Maybe, just maybe, the fault is entirely our own. After all, Croatia is the pits. The worse is coming out in the open at long last: wholesale corruption, rampant illiteracy, complicity with fascism of the most unsavory vintage.

I cannot but hope that my two court cases for so-called libel are receding, as well. Vapid as it is, the Croatian Constitution’s Article Thirty Eight suddenly comes to the fore: “The freedom of thought and of expression of thought is guaranteed.” My ass, and yet. Yet! Perhaps there is a small chance for intellectuals in this godforsaken country in this new atmosphere of creeping doubt. This new permissiveness in the making. Perhaps one can indeed think and even write about thieves and whores everywhere around us, and especially in the highest of places.

Imagine, even Croatians may one day recognize that power is not one and only. That those in power, regardless of their many profitable connections, are not the only ones to judge what goes and what does not. Forgive me on this moment of weakness, for I take myself to be an intellectual of finest discernment, but today I feel ever-so-slightly hopeful. Maybe the potentates of this miserable municipality, region, and state will one day lose their mortal grip. Perhaps this corrupt country is not entirely lost. I may be wrong, but deep inside I remain pitifully human: frail, silly, given to unreasonable hope.